Significance

Enemies/wildlife

Phendrana Shorelines is a room in the Phendrana Drifts, found in Metroid Prime. It contains two Missile Expansions, and is a major room in the area, being very large and connecting to many other rooms. It contains many tall rock pillars, an icy lake that is very shallow in places, the ruins of a building high on a ledge, and multiple platforms to reach higher areas.

To access Ice Ruins Access, the door must be released by scanning a panel below its ledge: this alcove is blocked by snow, so Morph Ball use is required for entry, but the scan can be made without going inside. Platforms further round this side Phendrana Shorelines lead up to the unlocked door. Higher up in the room, the Plaza Walkway door is used to access the Ruins Entryway door after circling back around to this room. The door to Temple Entryway requires the Space Jump Boots to reach the floating platform nearby and jump up to the ruins from there.

This is behind sheet of ice, inside a stone column near the door to Save Station B. To melt the ice, the Plasma Beam is required.

Missile Expansion

The other expansion in this room is at the top of the tower of the ruins, accessible only with the Space Jump Boots. Samus must use a Super Missile on the weak Cordite panel and then climb the track through the revealed hole using the Spider Ball.

At Retro Studios, every area begins with a "blue room" which is blank to allow the programmer to code an area (or room) how they want without being forced to work around the art staff. "This process is not unique to Retro," explained LeRoy. "Many game studios have people build out blocky low poly rooms to test game play and then hand them off to artists. The artists then take these low polygon blocked in rooms and rebuild them with tons of details and textures."

The Phendrana Shorelines took LeRoy about three weeks to model and texture. "I … usually build the whole room first then texture it. Sometimes, though, I get excited about a certain area so I texture it before the rest of the room," explained LeRoy. As far as details go, another artist added particle effects such as the snow later. Programmers added the fish swimming around in the pond later as well.